June 2007

June 2007 (vol. 1, issue 5)
"The Artist-Intellectual"

Last week at our Pleasant Hill campus I found myself unexpectedly engrossed in a conversation with a colleague concerning social praxis, personal responsibility, and creative living, an exchange that gripped my mind for several days and leads me to meditate here upon some of its salient ideas.

We are able to assume responsibility for our actions only when we intentionally set and have control over our objects, methods, and goals of life. To achieve this personal integrity requires that we live artfully and intelligently, traits of the role I refer to here as an "Artist-Intellectual." I shall distinguish this role from those of the intellectual "collector" of ideas and method-oriented "technician."

An Artist-Intellectual is not a professional sculptor, painter, or dancer who publishes academic books on art. He is not a scholar who composes novels, music, or poems. The roles of academician and pendant are unlovely in his eyes. He wishes to be neither an artist nor intellectual in contrast to living artfully and sensibly as a human being. He eschews both aestheticism and intellectualism as ends in themselves, favoring the fullest expression of his humanity through social interactions with others. If he does happen to create art and scholarship, it is for the love of the human spirit.

An Artist-Intellectual loves ideas and learning, but, unlike the collector of ideas, he does not turn away from social life. He knows that knowledge for its own sake, divorced from the issues and requirements of everyday life, may bring him close to a dangerous insularity, a self-satisfied retreat from the world. An Artist-Intellectual curates information, yes, but he also considers which thoughts, feelings, and experiences are to be pursued when, and for what reasons.

As object-love characterizes the intellectual collector, so method-love is the signature of the intellectual as technician. To be method oriented — efficient, clean, theoretical, and unrelated to the real world — is for an Artist-Intellectual no advancement beyond the collecting of ideas. Method is generally fickle, faithful only in a static environment. An Artist-Intellectual is an independent, creative thinker, free from tyranny of a single method of operation. He chooses among a repertoire of means, organizing experiences and synthesizing knowledge into a meaningful whole from which to act.

It is certain that society needs excellent mechanics and technicians in all domains of knowledge. But it is equally true that our world cries out for artists who can creatively solve problems, fashion inspiring products, and raise significant questions that mobilize personal and social commitments in the world. It is also true that a methodologist — one who studies methods and techniques in order to improve them — is also creative, but a final move is necessary.

The trait that most precisely distinguishes an Artist-Intellectual from the intellectual as collector or technician is the understanding of his goals in relation to his selected objects and methods. To accomplish this final move requires that he possess an attending mind capable of grasping why he does what he does. If he is moved from an object of interest in the world by a method that leads him to advocacy of some authentic social good, he is an Artist-Intellectual.

Because he is a highly flexible thinker, an Artist-Intellectual is a premier problem-solver. He knows that one approach to a problem or strategy for action may not work from context to context, and that he may get better results with the same method applied to a different object of focus. The goals of an Artist-Intellectual are complex, involving ethical, professional, family, and social considerations. He wants to achieve professional success, but also a good reputation, friendships, family, health, and wisdom. His acts proceed from his open-ended and practical philosophy.

An Artist-Intellectual contemplates the consequences of acting on his emotions, drives, behaviors, and ideas. He reflects on the nature and implications of using various systems of thought from context to context. He asks fundamental questions of himself: "What is my life about?" (a question of precepts and concepts); How do I feel about it? (a matter of propositions, and beliefs); What to do about it? (a question of values); How can I go about doing it? (a question of the operational procedures for dealing with people and things); and "Why do it?" (an ethical question of allegiances, and commitments in the world). He is a learner able to articulate as is needed to be decisive the changing relationship among his objects, methods, and goals of his study.

The foundation of an Artist-Intellectual's choices among his objects, methods, and goals is a personal philosophy and pragmatic standard of judgment. Without a conceptual framework of ideas, principles, and standards to which to relate information to a greater whole, human responsibility is impossible, since we are unable to determine which part of recorded experience is applicable to our character and life. To uncritically accept recorded experience as true, real, or good, is a mistake since that knowledge may have been defined too narrowly or interpreted inappropriately for us by well-intentioned others. The proper condition of an Artist-Intellectual, as for any fully functioning human being, is to use and interpret experience in his own way, exercising his faculties of perception, judgment, discriminating feeling, and moral preference. He makes personal choices to construct a desirable and flexible life-plan.

To a large extent, our well-being and happiness depends upon the effective use of a personal philosophy. We know all too well the caprice of life; we can lose our job, health, spouse, or wealth. Whether or not we suffer ruin by ill fortune or bravely face such troubles and move forward with our life is largely dependent upon how we perceive and interpret our experiences. Similarly, people are equally undone by unexpected success. The inability to properly process newly acquired power or acclaim is lethal to someone unable to effectively place it within a larger system of thought. Possessing a life philosophy that allows us to act upon what good may be envisioned inside an apparently disastrous event, as well as recognize and avoid what bad may follow from a seemingly successful event, can help us to demonstrate personal responsibility, civic wisdom, and creative power.

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